Harry Ruby

Harry Ruby, born Harold Ruby in New York in 1895 and died in Los Angeles in 1974, was an American composer and lyricist whose work was tied to popular song, Broadway musical theatre and Hollywood cinema during the first decades of the twentieth century.

His career began as a pianist in cafés, nickelodeon parlours and vaudeville. He worked as a plugger, that is, a performer tasked with promoting songs published by music publishers, for Gus Edwards and Harry von Tilzer. There he met Bert Kalmar, also a vaudeville performer, with whom he formed a songwriting partnership in which Kalmar wrote the lyrics and Ruby the melodies. Their first hit was When those sweet Hawaiian babies roll their eyes (1917), followed by numerous comic and light-hearted songs, among them Three Little Words (1930), which gave its title to his 1950 film biography.

With Kalmar, he composed scores for Broadway stages, such as Helen of Troy, New York (1923), The 5 O'Clock Girl (1927) and Animal Crackers (1928), the last starring the Marx Brothers and including the song Hooray for Captain Spaulding, which became Groucho Marx's theme. They also wrote music and screenplays for Hollywood, with titles such as The Kid from Spain (1932) and Duck Soup (1933).

The couple left behind a repertoire of popular songs that continued to be performed long after their era. Their legacy rests above all on that fusion of humour, simple melody and industrial pragmatism that characterised the American musical of the interwar years.